Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
by Joyce Carol Oates
for Bob Dylan
Her name was Connie. She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning
her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people's faces to make sure her own was all
right. Her mother, who noticed everything and knew everything and who hadn't much reason any
longer to look at her own face, always scolded Connie about it. "Stop gawking at yourself. Who
are you? You think you're so pretty?" she would say. Connie would raise her eyebrows at these
familiar old complaints and look right through her mother, into a shadowy vision of herself as she
was right at that moment: she knew she was pretty and that was everything. Her mother had
been pretty once too, if you could believe those old snapshots in the album, but now her looks
were gone and that was why she was always after Connie.
"Why don't you keep your room clean like your sister? How've you got your hair fixed—what the
hell stinks? Hair spray? You don't see your sister using that junk."
Her sister June was twenty-four and still lived at home. She was a secretary in the high school
Connie attended, and if that wasn't bad enough—with her in the same building—she was so
plain and chunky and steady that Connie had to hear her praised all the time by her mother and
her mother's sisters. June did this, June did that, she saved money and helped clean the house
and cooked and Connie couldn't do a thing, her mind was all filled with trashy daydreams. Their
father was away at work most of the time and when he came home he wanted supper and he
read the newspaper at supper and after supper he went to bed. He didn't bother talking much to
them, but around his bent head Connie's mother kept picking at her until Connie wished her
mother was dead and she herself was dead and it was all over. "She makes me want to throw up
sometimes," she complained to her friends. She had a high, breathless, amused voice that made
everything she said sound a little forced, whether it was sincere or not.
There was one good thing: June went places with girl friends of hers, girls who were just as plain
and steady as she, and so when Connie wanted to do that her mother had no objections. The
father of Connie's best girl friend drove the girls the three miles to town and left them at a
shopping plaza so they could walk through the stores or go to a movie, and when he came to
pick them up again at eleven he never bothered to ask what they had done.
They must have been familiar sights, walking around the shopping plaza in their shorts and flat
ballerina slippers that always scuffed the sidewalk, with charm bracelets jingling on their thin
wrists; they would lean together to whisper and laugh secretly if someone passed who amused
or interested them. Connie had long dark blond hair that drew anyone's eye to it, and she wore
part of it pulled up on her head and puffed out and the rest of it she let fall down her back. She
wore a pull-over jersey blouse that looked one way when she was at home and another way
when she was away from home. Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one
for anywhere that was not home: her walk, which could be childlike and bobbing, or languid
enough to make anyone think she was hearing music in her head; her mouth, which was pale
and smirking most of the time, but bright and pink on these evenings out; her laugh, which was
cynical and drawling at home—"Ha, ha, very funny,"—but high-pitched and nervous anywhere
else, like the jingling of the charms on her bracelet.
Sometimes they did go shopping or to a movie, but sometimes they went across the highway,
ducking fast across the busy road, to a drive-in restaurant where older kids hung out. The
restaurant was shaped like a big bottle, though squatter than a real bottle, and on its cap was a
revolving figure of a grinning boy holding a hamburger aloft. One night in midsummer they ran
across, breathless with daring, and right away someone leaned out a car window and invited
them over, but it was just a boy from high school they didn't like. It made them feel good to be
able to ignore him. They went up through the maze of parked and cruising cars to the bright-lit,
fly-infested restaurant, their faces pleased and expectant as if they were entering a sacred
building that loomed up out of the night to give them what haven and blessing they yearned for.
They sat at the counter and crossed their legs at the ankles, their thin shoulders rigid with
excitement, and listened to the music that made everything so good: the music was always in the
background, like music at a church service; it was something to depend upon.
A boy named Eddie came in to talk with them. He sat backwards on his stool, turning himself
jerkily around in semicircles and then stopping and turning back again, and after a while he
asked Connie if she would like something to eat. She said she would and so she tapped her
friend's arm on her way out—her friend pulled her face up into a brave, droll look—and Connie
said she would meet her at eleven, across the way. "I just hate to leave her like that," Connie
said earnestly, but the boy said that she wouldn't be alone for long. So they went out to his car,
and on the way Connie couldn't help but let her eyes wander over the windshields and faces all
around her, her face gleaming with a joy that had nothing to do with Eddie or even this place; it
might have been the music. She drew her shoulders up and sucked in her breath with the pure
pleasure of being alive, and just at that moment she happened to glance at a face just a few feet
from hers. It was a boy with shaggy black hair, in a convertible jalopy painted gold. He stared at
her and then his lips widened into a grin. Connie slit her eyes at him and turned away, but she
couldn't help glancing back and there he was, still watching her. He wagged a finger and laughed
and said, "Gonna get you, baby," and Connie turned away again without Eddie noticing anything.
She spent three hours with him, at the restaurant where they ate hamburgers and drank Cokes in
wax cups that were always sweating, and then down an alley a mile or so away, and when he left
her off at five to eleven only the movie house was still open at the plaza. Her girl friend was there,
talking with a boy. When Connie came up, the two girls smiled at each other and Connie said,
"How was the movie?" and the girl said, 'You should know." They rode off with the girl's father,
sleepy and pleased, and Connie couldn't help but look back at the darkened shopping plaza with
its big empty parking lot and its signs that were faded and ghostly now, and over at the drive-in
restaurant where cars were still circling tirelessly. She couldn't hear the music at this distance.
Next morning June asked her how the movie was and Connie said, "So-so."
She and that girl and occasionally another girl went out several times a week, and the rest of the
time Connie spent around the house—it was summer vacation—getting in her mother s way and
thinking, dreaming about the boys she met. But all the boys fell back and dissolved into a single
face that was not even a face but an idea, a feeling, mixed up with the urgent insistent pounding
of the music and the humid night air of July. Connie's mother kept dragging her back to the
daylight by finding things for her to do or saying suddenly, 'What's this about the Pettinger girl?"
And Connie would say nervously, "Oh, her. That dope." She always drew thick clear lines
between herself and such girls, and her mother was simple and kind enough to believe it. Her
mother was so simple, Connie thought, that it was maybe cruel to fool her so much. Her mother
went scuffling around the house in old bedroom slippers and complained over the telephone to
one sister about the other, then the other called up and the two of them complained about the
third one. If June's name was mentioned her mother's tone was approving, and if Connie's name
was mentioned it was disapproving. This did not really mean she disliked Connie, and actually
Connie thought that her mother preferred her to June just because she was prettier, but the two
of them kept up a pretence of exasperation, a sense that they were tugging and struggling over
something of little value to either of them. Sometimes, over coffee, they were almost friends, but
something would come up—some vexation that was like a fly buzzing suddenly around their
heads—and their faces went hard with contempt.
One Sunday Connie got up at eleven—none of them bothered with church—and washed her hair
so that it could dry all day long in the sun. Her parents and sister were going to a barbecue at an
aunt's house and Connie said no, she wasn't interested, rolling her eyes to let her mother know
just what she thought of it. "Stay home alone then," her mother said sharply. Connie sat out back
in a lawn chair and watched them drive away, her father quiet and bald, hunched around so that
he could back the car out, her mother with a look that was still angry and not at all softened
through the windshield, and in the back seat poor old June, all dressed up as if she didn't know
what a barbecue was, with all the running yelling kids and the flies. Connie sat with her eyes
closed in the sun, dreaming and dazed with the warmth about her as if this were a kind of love,
the caresses of love, and her mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the
night before and how nice he had been, how sweet it always was, not the way someone like
June would suppose but sweet, gentle, the way it was in movies and promised in songs; and
when she opened her eyes she hardly knew where she was, the back yard ran off into weeds
and a fence-like line of trees and behind it the sky was perfectly blue and still. The asbestos
ranch house that was now three years old startled her—it looked small. She shook her head as if
to get awake.
It was too hot. She went inside the house and turned on the radio to drown out the quiet. She sat
on the edge of her bed, barefoot, and listened for an hour and a half to a program called XYZ
Sunday Jamboree, record after record of hard, fast, shrieking songs she sang along with,
interspersed by exclamations from "Bobby King": "An' look here, you girls at Napoleon's—Son
and Charley want you to pay real close attention to this song coming up!"
And Connie paid close attention herself, bathed in a glow of slow-pulsed joy that seemed to rise
mysteriously out of the music itself and lay languidly about the airless little room, breathed in and
breathed out with each gentle rise and fall of her chest.
After a while she heard a car coming up the drive. She sat up at once, startled, because it
couldn't be her father so soon. The gravel kept crunching all the way in from the road—the
driveway was long—and Connie ran to the window. It was a car she didn't know. It was an open
jalopy, painted a bright gold that caught the sunlight opaquely. Her heart began to pound and her
fingers snatched at her hair, checking it, and she whispered, "Christ. Christ," wondering how bad
she looked. The car came to a stop at the side door and the horn sounded four short taps, as if
this were a signal Connie knew.
She went into the kitchen and approached the door slowly, then hung out the screen door, her
bare toes curling down off the step. There were two boys in the car and now she recognized the
driver: he had shaggy, shabby black hair that looked crazy as a wig and he was grinning at her.
"I ain't late, am I?" he said.
"Who the hell do you think you are?" Connie said.
"Toldja I'd be out, didn't I?"
"I don't even know who you are."
She spoke sullenly, careful to show no interest or pleasure, and he spoke in a fast, bright
monotone. Connie looked past him to the other boy, taking her time. He had fair brown hair, with
a lock that fell onto his forehead. His sideburns gave him a fierce, embarrassed look, but so far
he hadn't even bothered to glance at her. Both boys wore sunglasses. The driver's glasses were
metallic and mirrored everything in miniature.
"You wanta come for a ride?" he said.
Connie smirked and let her hair fall loose over one shoulder.
"Don'tcha like my car? New paint job," he said. "Hey."
"What?"
"You're cute."
She pretended to fidget, chasing flies away from the door.
"Don'tcha believe me, or what?" he said.
"Look, I don't even know who you are," Connie said in disgust.
"Hey, Ellie's got a radio, see. Mine broke down." He lifted his friend's arm and showed her the
little transistor radio the boy was holding, and now Connie began to hear the music. It was the
same program that was playing inside the house.
"Bobby King?" she said.
"I listen to him all the time. I think he's great."
"He's kind of great," Connie said reluctantly.
"Listen, that guy's great. He knows where the action is."
Connie blushed a little, because the glasses made it impossible for her to see just what this boy
was looking at. She couldn't decide if she liked him or if he was just a jerk, and so she dawdled in
the doorway and wouldn't come down or go back inside. She said, "What's all that stuff painted
on your car?"
"Can'tcha read it?" He opened the door very carefully, as if he were afraid it might fall off. He slid
out just as carefully, planting his feet firmly on the ground, the tiny metallic world in his glasses
slowing down like gelatine hardening, and in the midst of it Connie's bright green blouse. "This
here is my name, to begin with, he said. ARNOLD FRIEND was written in tarlike black letters on
the side, with a drawing of a round, grinning face that reminded Connie of a pumpkin, except it
wore sunglasses. "I wanta introduce myself, I'm Arnold Friend and that's my real name and I'm
gonna be your friend, honey, and inside the car's Ellie Oscar, he's kinda shy." Ellie brought his
transistor radio up to his shoulder and balanced it there. "Now, these numbers are a secret code,
honey," Arnold Friend explained. He read off the numbers 33, 19, 17 and raised his eyebrows at
her to see what she thought of that, but she didn't think much of it. The left rear fender had been
smashed and around it was written, on the gleaming gold background: DONE BY CRAZY
WOMAN DRIVER. Connie had to laugh at that. Arnold Friend was pleased at her laughter and
looked up at her. "Around the other side's a lot more —you wanta come and see them?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Why should I?"
"Don'tcha wanta see what's on the car? Don'tcha wanta go for a ride?"
"I don't know."
"Why not?"
"I got things to do."
"Like what?"
"Things."
He laughed as if she had said something funny. He slapped his thighs. He was standing in a
strange way, leaning back against the car as if he were balancing himself. He wasn't tall, only an
inch or so taller than she would be if she came down to him. Connie liked the way he was
dressed, which was the way all of them dressed: tight faded jeans stuffed into black, scuffed
boots, a belt that pulled his waist in and showed how lean he was, and a white pull-over shirt that
was a little soiled and showed the hard small muscles of his arms and shoulders. He looked as if
he probably did hard work, lifting and carrying things. Even his neck looked muscular. And his
face was a familiar face, somehow: the jaw and chin and cheeks slightly darkened because he
hadn't shaved for a day or two, and the nose long and hawklike, sniffing as if she were a treat he
was going to gobble up and it was all a joke.
"Connie, you ain't telling the truth. This is your day set aside for a ride with me and you know it,"
he said, still laughing. The way he straightened and recovered from his fit of laughing showed
that it had been all fake.
"How do you know what my name is?" she said suspiciously.
"It's Connie."
"Maybe and maybe not."
"I know my Connie," he said, wagging his finger. Now she remembered him even better, back at
the restaurant, and her cheeks warmed at the thought of how she had sucked in her breath just
at the moment she passed him—how she must have looked to him. And he had remembered her.
"Ellie and I come out here especially for you," he said. "Ellie can sit in back. How about it?"
"Where?"
"Where what?"
"Where're we going?"
He looked at her. He took off the sunglasses and she saw how pale the skin around his eyes was,
like holes that were not in shadow but instead in light. His eyes were like chips of broken glass
that catch the light in an amiable way. He smiled. It was as if the idea of going for a ride
somewhere, to someplace, was a new idea to him.
"Just for a ride, Connie sweetheart."
"I never said my name was Connie," she said.
"But I know what it is. I know your name and all about you, lots of things," Arnold Friend said. He
had not moved yet but stood still leaning back against the side of his jalopy. "I took a special
interest in you, such a pretty girl, and found out all about you—like I know your parents and sister
are gone somewheres and I know where and how long they're going to be gone, and I know who
you were with last night, and your best girl friend's name is Betty. Right?"
He spoke in a simple lilting voice, exactly as if he were reciting the words to a song. His smile
assured her that everything was fine. In the car Ellie turned up the volume on his radio and did
not bother to look around at them.
"Ellie can sit in the back seat," Arnold Friend said. He indicated his friend with a casual jerk of his
chin, as if Ellie did not count and she should not bother with him.
"How'd you find out all that stuff?" Connie said.
"Listen: Betty Schultz and Tony Fitch and Jimmy Pettinger and Nancy Pettinger," he said in a
chant. "Raymond Stanley and Bob Hutter—"
"Do you know all those kids?"
"I know everybody."
"Look, you're kidding. You're not from around here."
"Sure."
"But—how come we never saw you before?"
"Sure you saw me before," he said. He looked down at his boots, as if he were a little offended.
"You just don't remember."
"I guess I'd remember you," Connie said.
"Yeah?" He looked up at this, beaming. He was pleased. He began to mark time with the music
from Ellie's radio, tapping his fists lightly together. Connie looked away from his smile to the car,
which was painted so bright it almost hurt her eyes to look at it. She looked at that name,
ARNOLD FRIEND. And up at the front fender was an expression that was familiar—MAN THE
FLYING SAUCERS. It was an expression kids had used the year before but didn't use this year.
She looked at it for a while as if the words meant something to her that she did not yet know.
"What're you thinking about? Huh?" Arnold Friend demanded. "Not worried about your hair
blowing around in the car, are you?"
"No."
"Think I maybe can't drive good?"
"How do I know?"
"You're a hard girl to handle. How come?" he said. "Don't you know I'm your friend? Didn't you
see me put my sign in the air when you walked by?"
"What sign?"
"My sign." And he drew an X in the air, leaning out toward her. They were maybe ten feet apart.
After his hand fell back to his side the X was still in the air, almost visible. Connie let the screen
door close and stood perfectly still inside it, listening to the music from her radio and the boy's
blend together. She stared at Arnold Friend. He stood there so stiffly relaxed, pretending to be
relaxed, with one hand idly on the door handle as if he were keeping himself up that way and had
no intention of ever moving again. She recognized most things about him, the tight jeans that
showed his thighs and buttocks and the greasy leather boots and the tight shirt, and even that
slippery friendly smile of his, that sleepy dreamy smile that all the boys used to get across ideas
they didn't want to put into words. She recognized all this and also the singsong way he talked,
slightly mocking, kidding, but serious and a little melancholy, and she recognized the way he
tapped one fist against the other in homage to the perpetual music behind him. But all these
things did not come together.
She said suddenly, "Hey, how old are you?"
His smiled faded. She could see then that he wasn't a kid, he was much older—thirty, maybe
more. At this knowledge her heart began to pound faster.
"That's a crazy thing to ask. Can'tcha see I'm your own age?"
"Like hell you are."
"Or maybe a couple years older. I'm eighteen."
"Eighteen?" she said doubtfully.
He grinned to reassure her and lines appeared at the corners of his mouth. His teeth were big
and white. He grinned so broadly his eyes became slits and she saw how thick the lashes were,
thick and black as if painted with a black tarlike material. Then, abruptly, he seemed to become
embarrassed and looked over his shoulder at Ellie. "Him, he's crazy," he said. "Ain't he a riot?
He's a nut, a real character." Ellie was still listening to the music. His sunglasses told nothing
about what he was thinking. He wore a bright orange shirt unbuttoned halfway to show his chest,
which was a pale, bluish chest and not muscular like Arnold Friend's. His shirt collar was turned
up all around and the very tips of the collar pointed out past his chin as if they were protecting
him. He was pressing the transistor radio up against his ear and sat there in a kind of daze, right
in the sun.
"He's kinda strange," Connie said.
"Hey, she says you're kinda strange! Kinda strange!" Arnold Friend cried. He pounded on the car
to get Ellie's attention. Ellie turned for the first time and Connie saw with shock that he wasn't a
kid either—he had a fair, hairless face, cheeks reddened slightly as if the veins grew too close to
the surface of his skin, the face of a forty-year-old baby. Connie felt a wave of dizziness rise in
her at this sight and she stared at him as if waiting for something to change the shock of the
moment, make it all right again. Ellie's lips kept shaping words, mumbling along with the words
blasting in his ear.
"Maybe you two better go away," Connie said faintly.
"What? How come?" Arnold Friend cried. "We come out here to take you for a ride. It's Sunday."
He had the voice of the man on the radio now. It was the same voice, Connie thought. "Don'tcha
know it's Sunday all day? And honey, no matter who you were with last night, today you're with
Arnold Friend and don't you forget it! Maybe you better step out here," he said, and this last was
in a different voice. It was a little flatter, as if the heat was finally getting to him.
"No. I got things to do."
"Hey."
"You two better leave."
"We ain't leaving until you come with us."
"Like hell I am—"
"Connie, don't fool around with me. I mean—I mean, don't fool around," he said, shaking his
head. He laughed incredulously. He placed his sunglasses on top of his head, carefully, as if he
were indeed wearing a wig, and brought the stems down behind his ears. Connie stared at him,
another wave of dizziness and fear rising in her so that for a moment he wasn't even in focus but
was just a blur standing there against his gold car, and she had the idea that he had driven up
the driveway all right but had come from nowhere before that and belonged nowhere and that
everything about him and even about the music that was so familiar to her was only half real.
"If my father comes and sees you—"
"He ain't coming. He's at a barbecue."
"How do you know that?"
"Aunt Tillie's. Right now they're uh—they're drinking. Sitting around," he said vaguely, squinting
as if he were staring all the way to town and over to Aunt Tillie's back yard. Then the vision
seemed to get clear and he nodded energetically. "Yeah. Sitting around. There's your sister in a
blue dress, huh? And high heels, the poor sad bitch—nothing like you, sweetheart! And your
mother's helping some fat woman with the corn, they're cleaning the corn—husking the corn—"
"What fat woman?" Connie cried.
"How do I know what fat woman, I don't know every goddamn fat woman in the world!" Arnold
Friend laughed.
"Oh, that's Mrs. Hornsby . . . . Who invited her?" Connie said. She felt a little lightheaded. Her
breath was coming quickly.
"She's too fat. I don't like them fat. I like them the way you are, honey," he said, smiling sleepily
at her. They stared at each other for a while through the screen door. He said softly, "Now, what
you're going to do is this: you're going to come out that door. You’re going to sit up front with me
and Ellie's going to sit in the back, the hell with Ellie, right? This isn't Ellie's date. You're my date.
I'm your lover, honey."
"What? You're crazy—"
"Yes, I'm your lover. You don't know what that is but you will," he said. "I know that too. I know all
about you. But look: it's real nice and you couldn't ask for nobody better than me, or more polite. I
always keep my word. I'll tell you how it is, I'm always nice at first, the first time. I'll hold you so
tight you won't think you have to try to get away or pretend anything because you'll know you
can't. And I'll come inside you where it's all secret and you'll give in to me and you'll love me "
"Shut up! You're crazy!" Connie said. She backed away from the door. She put her hands up
against her ears as if she'd heard something terrible, something not meant for her. "People don't
talk like that, you're crazy," she muttered. Her heart was almost too big now for her chest and its
pumping made sweat break out all over her. She looked out to see Arnold Friend pause and then
take a step toward the porch, lurching. He almost fell. But, like a clever drunken man, he
managed to catch his balance. He wobbled in his high boots and grabbed hold of one of the
porch posts.
"Honey?" he said. "You still listening?"
"Get the hell out of here!"
"Be nice, honey. Listen."
"I'm going to call the police—"
He wobbled again and out of the side of his mouth came a fast spat curse, an aside not meant
for her to hear. But even this "Christ!" sounded forced. Then he began to smile again. She
watched this smile come, awkward as if he were smiling from inside a mask. His whole face was
a mask, she thought wildly, tanned down to his throat but then running out as if he had plastered
make-up on his face but had forgotten about his throat.
"Honey—? Listen, here's how it is. I always tell the truth and I promise you this: I ain't coming in
that house after you."
"You better not! I'm going to call the police if you—if you don't—"
"Honey," he said, talking right through her voice, "honey, I m not coming in there but you are
coming out here. You know why?"
She was panting. The kitchen looked like a place she had never seen before, some room she
had run inside but that wasn't good enough, wasn't going to help her. The kitchen window had
never had a curtain, after three years, and there were dishes in the sink for her to do—
probably—and if you ran your hand across the table you'd probably feel something sticky there.
"You listening, honey? Hey?" "—going to call the police—"
"Soon as you touch the phone I don't need to keep my promise and can come inside. You won't
want that."
She rushed forward and tried to lock the door. Her fingers were shaking. "But why lock it," Arnold
Friend said gently, talking right into her face. "It's just a screen door. It's just nothing." One of his
boots was at a strange angle, as if his foot wasn't in it. It pointed out to the left, bent at the ankle.
"I mean, anybody can break through a screen door and glass and wood and iron or anything else
if he needs to, anybody at all, and specially Arnold Friend. If the place got lit up with a fire, honey,
you'd come runnin' out into my arms, right into my arms an' safe at home—like you knew I was
your lover and'd stopped fooling around. I don't mind a nice shy girl but I don't like no fooling
around." Part of those words were spoken with a slight rhythmic lilt, and Connie somehow
recognized them—the echo of a song from last year, about a girl rushing into her boy friend's
arms and coming home again—
Connie stood barefoot on the linoleum floor, staring at him. "What do you want?" she whispered.
"I want you," he said.
"What?"
"Seen you that night and thought, that's the one, yes sir. I never needed to look anymore."
"But my father's coming back. He's coming to get me. I had to wash my hair first—'' She spoke in
a dry, rapid voice, hardly raising it for him to hear.
"No, your daddy is not coming and yes, you had to wash your hair and you washed it for me. It's
nice and shining and all for me. I thank you sweetheart," he said with a mock bow, but again he
almost lost his balance. He had to bend and adjust his boots. Evidently his feet did not go all the
way down; the boots must have been stuffed with something so that he would seem taller.
Connie stared out at him and behind him at Ellie in the car, who seemed to be looking off toward
Connie's right, into nothing. This Ellie said, pulling the words out of the air one after another as if
he were just discovering them, "You want me to pull out the phone?"
"Shut your mouth and keep it shut," Arnold Friend said, his face red from bending over or maybe
from embarrassment because Connie had seen his boots. "This ain't none of your business."
"What—what are you doing? What do you want?" Connie said. "If I call the police they'll get you,
they'll arrest you—"
"Promise was not to come in unless you touch that phone, and I'll keep that promise," he said.
He resumed his erect position and tried to force his shoulders back. He sounded like a hero in a
movie, declaring something important. But he spoke too loudly and it was as if he were speaking
to someone behind Connie. "I ain't made plans for coming in that house where I don't belong but
just for you to come out to me, the way you should. Don't you know who I am?"
"You're crazy," she whispered. She backed away from the door but did not want to go into
another part of the house, as if this would give him permission to come through the door. "What
do you . . . you're crazy, you. . . ."
"Huh? What're you saying, honey?"
Her eyes darted everywhere in the kitchen. She could not remember what it was, this room.
"This is how it is, honey: you come out and we'll drive away, have a nice ride. But if you don't
come out we're gonna wait till your people come home and then they're all going to get it."
"You want that telephone pulled out?" Ellie said. He held the radio away from his ear and
grimaced, as if without the radio the air was too much for him.
"I toldja shut up, Ellie," Arnold Friend said, "you're deaf, get a hearing aid, right? Fix yourself up.
This little girl's no trouble and's gonna be nice to me, so Ellie keep to yourself, this ain't your date
right? Don't hem in on me, don't hog, don't crush, don't bird dog, don't trail me," he said in a rapid,
meaningless voice, as if he were running through all the expressions he'd learned but was no
longer sure which of them was in style, then rushing on to new ones, making them up with his
eyes closed. "Don't crawl under my fence, don't squeeze in my chipmonk hole, don't sniff my
glue, suck my popsicle, keep your own greasy fingers on yourself!" He shaded his eyes and
peered in at Connie, who was backed against the kitchen table. "Don't mind him, honey, he's just
a creep. He's a dope. Right? I'm the boy for you, and like I said, you come out here nice like a
lady and give me your hand, and nobody else gets hurt, I mean, your nice old bald-headed
daddy and your mummy and your sister in her high heels. Because listen: why bring them in
this?"
"Leave me alone," Connie whispered.
"Hey, you know that old woman down the road, the one with the chickens and stuff—you know
her?"
"She's dead!"
"Dead? What? You know her?" Arnold Friend said.
"She's dead—"
"Don't you like her?"
"She's dead—she's—she isn't here any more—"
But don't you like her, I mean, you got something against her? Some grudge or something?"
Then his voice dipped as if he were conscious of a rudeness. He touched the sunglasses
perched up on top of his head as if to make sure they were still there. "Now, you be a good girl."
'What are you going to do?"
"Just two things, or maybe three," Arnold Friend said. "But I promise it won't last long and you'll
like me the way you get to like people you're close to. You will. It's all over for you here, so come
on out. You don't want your people in any trouble, do you?"
She turned and bumped against a chair or something, hurting her leg, but she ran into the back
room and picked up the telephone. Something roared in her ear, a tiny roaring, and she was so
sick with fear that she could do nothing but listen to it—the telephone was clammy and very
heavy and her fingers groped down to the dial but were too weak to touch it. She began to
scream into the phone, into the roaring. She cried out, she cried for her mother, she felt her
breath start jerking back and forth in her lungs as if it were something Arnold Friend was stabbing
her with again and again with no tenderness. A noisy sorrowful wailing rose all about her and she
was locked inside it the way she was locked inside this house.
After a while she could hear again. She was sitting on the floor with her wet back against the wall.
Arnold Friend was saying from the door, "That's a good girl. Put the phone back."
She kicked the phone away from her.
"No, honey. Pick it up. Put it back right."
She picked it up and put it back. The dial tone stopped.
"That's a good girl. Now, you come outside."
She was hollow with what had been fear but what was now just an emptiness. All that screaming
had blasted it out of her. She sat, one leg cramped under her, and deep inside her brain was
something like a pinpoint of light that kept going and would not let her relax. She thought, I'm not
going to see my mother again. She thought, I'm not going to sleep in my bed again. Her bright
green blouse was all wet.
Arnold Friend said, in a gentle-loud voice that was like a stage voice, "The place where you
came from ain't there any more, and where you had in mind to go is cancelled out. This place
you are now—inside your daddy's house—is nothing but a cardboard box I can knock down any
time. You know that and always did know it. You hear me?"
She thought, I have got to think. I have got to know what to do.
"We'll go out to a nice field, out in the country here where it smells so nice and it's sunny," Arnold
Friend said. "I'll have my arms tight around you so you won't need to try to get away and I'll show
you what love is like, what it does. The hell with this house! It looks solid all right," he said. He
ran a fingernail down the screen and the noise did not make Connie shiver, as it would have the
day before. "Now, put your hand on your heart, honey. Feel that? That feels solid too but we
know better. Be nice to me, be sweet like you can because what else is there for a girl like you
but to be sweet and pretty and give in?—and get away before her people come back?"
She felt her pounding heart. Her hand seemed to enclose it. She thought for the first time in her
life that it was nothing that was hers, that belonged to her, but just a pounding, living thing inside
this body that wasn't really hers either.
"You don't want them to get hurt," Arnold Friend went on. "Now, get up, honey. Get up all by
yourself."
She stood.
"Now, turn this way. That's right. Come over here to me.—Ellie, put that away, didn't I tell you?
You dope. You miserable creepy dope," Arnold Friend said. His words were not angry but only
part of an incantation. The incantation was kindly. "Now come out through the kitchen to me,
honey, and let's see a smile, try it, you’re a brave, sweet little girl and now they're eating corn and
hot dogs cooked to bursting over an outdoor fire, and they don't know one thing about you and
never did and honey, you're better than them because not a one of them would have done this
for you."
Connie felt the linoleum under her feet; it was cool. She brushed her hair back out of her eyes.
Arnold Friend let go of the post tentatively and opened his arms for her, his elbows pointing in
toward each other and his wrists limp, to show that this was an embarrassed embrace and a little
mocking, he didn't want to make her self-conscious.
She put out her hand against the screen. She watched herself push the door slowly open as if
she were back safe somewhere in the other doorway, watching this body and this head of long
hair moving out into the sunlight where Arnold Friend waited.
"My sweet little blue-eyed girl," he said in a half-sung sigh that had nothing to do with her brown
eyes but was taken up just the same by the vast sunlit reaches of the land behind him and on all
sides of him—so much land that Connie had never seen before and did not recognize except to
know that she was going to it
Guy de Maupassant
The Necklace
She was one of those pretty and charming girls born, as though fate had blundered
over her, into a family of artisans. She had no marriage portion, no expectations, no
means of getting known, understood, loved, and wedded by a man of wealth and
distinction; and she let herself be married off to a little clerk in the Ministry of
Education. Her tastes were simple because she had never been able to afford any other,
but she was as unhappy as though she had married beneath her; for women have no
caste or class, their beauty, grace, and charm serving them for birth or family, their
natural delicacy, their instinctive elegance, their nimbleness of wit, are their only mark
of rank, and put the slum girl on a level with the highest lady in the land.
She suffered endlessly, feeling herself born for every delicacy and luxury. She
suffered from the poorness of her house, from its mean walls, worn chairs, and ugly
curtains. All these things, of which other women of her class would not even have been
aware, tormented and insulted her. The sight of the little Breton girl who came to do
the work in her little house aroused heart-broken regrets and hopeless dreams in her
mind. She imagined silent antechambers, heavy with Oriental tapestries, lit by torches
in lofty bronze sockets, with two tall footmen in knee-breeches sleeping in large armchairs, overcome by the heavy warmth of the stove. She imagined vast saloons hung
with antique silks, exquisite pieces of furniture supporting priceless ornaments, and
small, charming, perfumed rooms, created just for little parties of intimate friends, men
who were famous and sought after, whose homage roused every other woman's
envious longings.
When she sat down for dinner at the round table covered with a three-days-old
cloth, opposite her husband, who took the cover off the soup-tureen, exclaiming
delightedly: "Aha! Scotch broth! What could be better?" she imagined delicate meals,
gleaming silver, tapestries peopling the walls with folk of a past age and strange birds
in faery forests; she imagined delicate food served in marvellous dishes, murmured
gallantries, listened to with an inscrutable smile as one trifled with the rosy flesh of
trout or wings of asparagus chicken.
She had no clothes, no jewels, nothing. And these were the only things she loved;
she felt that she was made for them. She had longed so eagerly to charm, to be
desired, to be wildly attractive and sought after.
She had a rich friend, an old school friend whom she refused to visit, because she
suffered so keenly when she returned home. She would weep whole days, with grief,
regret, despair, and misery.
*
One evening her husband came home with an exultant air, holding a large envelope in
his hand.
"Here's something for you," he said.
Swiftly she tore the paper and drew out a printed card on which were these words:
"The Minister of Education and Madame Ramponneau request the pleasure of the
company of Monsieur and Madame Loisel at the Ministry on the evening of Monday,
January the 18th."
Instead of being delighted, as her husband hoped, she flung the invitation petulantly
across the table, murmuring:
"What do you want me to do with this?"
"Why, darling, I thought you'd be pleased. You never go out, and this is a great
occasion. I had tremendous trouble to get it. Every one wants one; it's very select, and
very few go to the clerks. You'll see all the really big people there."
She looked at him out of furious eyes, and said impatiently: "And what do you
suppose I am to wear at such an affair?"
He had not thought about it; he stammered:
"Why, the dress you go to the theatre in. It looks very nice, to me . . ."
He stopped, stupefied and utterly at a loss when he saw that his wife was beginning
to cry. Two large tears ran slowly down from the corners of her eyes towards the
corners of her mouth.
"What's the matter with you? What's the matter with you?" he faltered.
But with a violent effort she overcame her grief and replied in a calm voice, wiping
her wet cheeks:
"Nothing. Only I haven't a dress and so I can't go to this party. Give your invitation
to some friend of yours whose wife will be turned out better than I shall."
He was heart-broken.
"Look here, Mathilde," he persisted. "What would be the cost of a suitable dress,
which you could use on other occasions as well, something very simple?"
She thought for several seconds, reckoning up prices and also wondering for how
large a sum she could ask without bringing upon herself an immediate refusal and an
exclamation of horror from the careful-minded clerk.
At last she replied with some hesitation:
"I don't know exactly, but I think I could do it on four hundred francs."
He grew slightly pale, for this was exactly the amount he had been saving for a gun,
intending to get a little shooting next summer on the plain of Nanterre with some
friends who went lark-shooting there on Sundays.
Nevertheless he said: "Very well. I'll give you four hundred francs. But try and get a
really nice dress with the money."
The day of the party drew near, and Madame Loisel seemed sad, uneasy and
anxious. Her dress was ready, however. One evening her husband said to her:
"What's the matter with you? You've been very odd for the last three days."
"I'm utterly miserable at not having any jewels, not a single stone, to wear," she
replied. "I shall look absolutely no one. I would almost rather not go to the party."
"Wear flowers," he said. "They're very smart at this time of the year. For ten francs
you could get two or three gorgeous roses."
She was not convinced.
"No . . . there's nothing so humiliating as looking poor in the middle of a lot of rich
women."
"How stupid you are!" exclaimed her husband. "Go and see Madame Forestier and
ask her to lend you some jewels. You know her quite well enough for that."
She uttered a cry of delight.
"That's true. I never thought of it."
Next day she went to see her friend and told her her trouble.
Madame Forestier went to her dressing-table, took up a large box, brought it to
Madame Loisel, opened it, and said:
"Choose, my dear."
First she saw some bracelets, then a pearl necklace, then a Venetian cross in gold
and gems, of exquisite workmanship. She tried the effect of the jewels before the
mirror, hesitating, unable to make up her mind to leave them, to give them up. She
kept on asking:
"Haven't you anything else?"
"Yes. Look for yourself. I don't know what you would like best."
Suddenly she discovered, in a black satin case, a superb diamond necklace; her
heart began to beat covetously. Her hands trembled as she lifted it. She fastened it
round her neck, upon her high dress, and remained in ecstasy at sight of herself.
Then, with hesitation, she asked in anguish:
"Could you lend me this, just this alone?"
"Yes, of course."
She flung herself on her friend's breast, embraced her frenziedly, and went away
with her treasure. The day of the party arrived. Madame Loisel was a success. She was
the prettiest woman present, elegant, graceful, smiling, and quite above herself with
happiness. All the men stared at her, inquired her name, and asked to be introduced to
her. All the Under-Secretaries of State were eager to waltz with her. The Minister
noticed her.
She danced madly, ecstatically, drunk with pleasure, with no thought for anything,
in the triumph of her beauty, in the pride of her success, in a cloud of happiness made
up of this universal homage and admiration, of the desires she had aroused, of the
completeness of a victory so dear to her feminine heart.
She left about four o'clock in the morning. Since midnight her husband had been
dozing in a deserted little room, in company with three other men whose wives were
having a good time. He threw over her shoulders the garments he had brought for them
to go home in, modest everyday clothes, whose poverty clashed with the beauty of the
ball-dress. She was conscious of this and was anxious to hurry away, so that she should
not be noticed by the other women putting on their costly furs.
Loisel restrained her.
"Wait a little. You'll catch cold in the open. I'm going to fetch a cab."
But she did not listen to him and rapidly descended the staircase. When they were
out in the street they could not find a cab; they began to look for one, shouting at the
drivers whom they saw passing in the distance.
They walked down towards the Seine, desperate and shivering. At last they found on
the quay one of those old nightprowling carriages which are only to be seen in Paris
after dark, as though they were ashamed of their shabbiness in the daylight.
It brought them to their door in the Rue des Martyrs, and sadly they walked up to
their own apartment. It was the end, for her. As for him, he was thinking that he must
be at the office at ten.
She took off the garments in which she had wrapped her shoulders, so as to see
herself in all her glory before the mirror. But suddenly she uttered a cry. The necklace
was no longer round her neck!
"What's the matter with you?" asked her husband, already half undressed.
She turned towards him in the utmost distress.
"I . . . I . . . I've no longer got Madame Forestier's necklace. . . ."
He started with astonishment.
"What! . . . Impossible!"
They searched in the folds of her dress, in the folds of the coat, in the pockets,
everywhere. They could not find it.
"Are you sure that you still had it on when you came away from the ball?" he asked.
"Yes, I touched it in the hall at the Ministry."
"But if you had lost it in the street, we should have heard it fall."
"Yes. Probably we should. Did you take the number of the cab?"
"No. You didn't notice it, did you?"
"No."
They stared at one another, dumbfounded. At last Loisel put on his clothes again.
"I'll go over all the ground we walked," he said, "and see if I can't find it."
And he went out. She remained in her evening clothes, lacking strength to get into
bed, huddled on a chair, without volition or power of thought.
Her husband returned about seven. He had found nothing.
He went to the police station, to the newspapers, to offer a reward, to the cab
companies, everywhere that a ray of hope impelled him.
She waited all day long, in the same state of bewilderment at this fearful
catastrophe.
Loisel came home at night, his face lined and pale; he had discovered nothing.
"You must write to your friend," he said, "and tell her that you've broken the clasp
of her necklace and are getting it mended. That will give us time to look about us."
She wrote at his dictation.
*
By the end of a week they had lost all hope.
Loisel, who had aged five years, declared:
"We must see about replacing the diamonds."
Next day they took the box which had held the necklace and went to the jewellers
whose name was inside. He consulted his books.
"It was not I who sold this necklace, Madame; I must have merely supplied the
clasp."
Then they went from jeweller to jeweller, searching for another necklace like the
first, consulting their memories, both ill with remorse and anguish of mind.
In a shop at the Palais-Royal they found a string of diamonds which seemed to them
exactly like the one they were looking for. It was worth forty thousand francs. They
were allowed to have it for thirty-six thousand.
They begged the jeweller not to sell it for three days. And they arranged matters on
the understanding that it would be taken back for thirty-four thousand francs, if the first
one were found before the end of February.
Loisel possessed eighteen thousand francs left to him by his father. He intended to
borrow the rest.
He did borrow it, getting a thousand from one man, five hundred from another, five
louis here, three louis there. He gave notes of hand, entered into ruinous agreements,
did business with usurers and the whole tribe of money-lenders. He mortgaged the
whole remaining years of his existence, risked his signature without even knowing if he
could honour it, and, appalled at the agonising face of the future, at the black misery
about to fall upon him, at the prospect of every possible physical privation and moral
torture, he went to get the new necklace and put down upon the jeweller's counter
thirty-six thousand francs.
When Madame Loisel took back the necklace to Madame Forestier, the latter said to
her in a chilly voice:
"You ought to have brought it back sooner; I might have needed it."
She did not, as her friend had feared, open the case. If she had noticed the
substitution, what would she have thought? What would she have said? Would she not
have taken her for a thief?
*
Madame Loisel came to know the ghastly life of abject poverty. From the very first she
played her part heroically. This fearful debt must be paid off. She would pay it. The
servant was dismissed. They changed their flat; they took a garret under the roof.
She came to know the heavy work of the house, the hateful duties of the kitchen.
She washed the plates, wearing out her pink nails on the coarse pottery and the
bottoms of pans. She washed the dirty linen, the shirts and dish-cloths, and hung them
out to dry on a string; every morning she took the dustbin down into the street and
carried up the water, stopping on each landing to get her breath. And, clad like a poor
woman, she went to the fruiterer, to the grocer, to the butcher, a basket on her arm,
haggling, insulted, fighting for every wretched halfpenny of her money.
Every month notes had to be paid off, others renewed, time gained.
Her husband worked in the evenings at putting straight a merchant's accounts, and
often at night he did copying at twopence-halfpenny a page.
And this life lasted ten years.
At the end of ten years everything was paid off, everything, the usurer's charges
and the accumulation of superimposed interest.
Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become like all the other strong, hard,
coarse women of poor households. Her hair was badly done, her skirts were awry, her
hands were red. She spoke in a shrill voice, and the water slopped all over the floor
when she scrubbed it. But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she sat
down by the window and thought of that evening long ago, of the ball at which she had
been so beautiful and so much admired.
What would have happened if she had never lost those jewels. Who knows? Who
knows? How strange life is, how fickle! How little is needed to ruin or to save!
One Sunday, as she had gone for a walk along the Champs-Elysees to freshen
herself after the labours of the week, she caught sight suddenly of a woman who was
taking a child out for a walk. It was Madame Forestier, still young, still beautiful, still
attractive.
Madame Loisel was conscious of some emotion. Should she speak to her? Yes,
certainly. And now that she had paid, she would tell her all. Why not?
She went up to her.
"Good morning, Jeanne."
The other did not recognise her, and was surprised at being thus familiarly
addressed by a poor woman.
"But . . . Madame . . ." she stammered. "I don't know . . . you must be making a
mistake."
"No . . . I am Mathilde Loisel."
Her friend uttered a cry.
"Oh! . . . my poor Mathilde, how you have changed! . . ."
"Yes, I've had some hard times since I saw you last; and many sorrows . . . and all
on your account."
"On my account! . . . How was that?"
"You remember the diamond necklace you lent me for the ball at the Ministry?"
"Yes. Well?"
"Well, I lost it."
"How could you? Why, you brought it back."
"I brought you another one just like it. And for the last ten years we have been
paying for it. You realise it wasn't easy for us; we had no money. . . . Well, it's paid for
at last, and I'm glad indeed."
Madame Forestier had halted.
"You say you bought a diamond necklace to replace mine?"
"Yes. You hadn't noticed it? They were very much alike."
And she smiled in proud and innocent happiness.
Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took her two hands.
"Oh, my poor Mathilde! But mine was imitation. It was worth at the very most five
hundred francs! . . . "
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Ambrose Bierce
A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift
water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with
a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above
his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees.
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
by Ambrose Bierce
A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water
twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A
rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and
the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting
the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners--two private
soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy
sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of
his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in
the position known as "support," that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the
hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest--a formal and unnatural
position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two
men to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two
ends of the foot planking that traversed it.
Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest
for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther
along. The other bank of the stream was open ground--a gentle acclivity topped with a
stockade of vertical tree trunks, loopholed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which
protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway of the slope
between the bridge and fort were the spectators--a single company of infantry in line, at
"parade rest," the butts of the rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward
against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieu tenant stood at the right
of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right.
Excepting the group of four at the center of the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced
the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might
have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing
the work of his subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who when he comes
announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most
familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference.
The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He
was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features
were good--a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was
combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock coat. He
wore a mustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and
had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the
hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for
hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.
The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away
the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and
placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These
movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same
plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian
stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight
of the captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter
would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between two ties.
The arrangement commended itself to his judgment as simple and effective. His face had not
been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his "unsteadfast footing," then
let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece
of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How
slowly it appeared to move, What a sluggish stream!
He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water,
touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down
the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift--all had distracted him. And now he
became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a
sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion
like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He
wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by--it seemed both. Its
recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke
with impatience and--he knew not why--apprehension. The intervals of silence grew
progressively longer, the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the
sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he
feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.
He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. "If I could free my hands," he
thought, "I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the
bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My
home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the
invader's farthest advance."
As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed
man's brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant
stepped aside.
II
Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family.
Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician he was naturally an original
secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious
nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with
the gallant army that had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth,
and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the
larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would
come, as it comes to all in war time. Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was too
humble for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to
undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in
good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly
villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.
One evening while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to
his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs.
Farquhar was only toe, happy to serve him with her own white hands. While she was fetching
the water her husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news from
the front.
"The Yanks are repairing the railroads," said the man, "and are getting ready for another
advance. They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put it in order and built a stockade on the
north bank. The commandant has issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring
that any civilian caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels or trains will be
summarily hanged. I saw the order."
"How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?" Farquhar asked.
"About thirty miles."
"Is there no force on this side the creek?"
"Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single sentinel at this end of the
bridge."
"Suppose a man--a civilian and student of hanging--should elude the picket post and perhaps
get the better of the sentinel," said Farquhar, smiling, "what could he accomplish?"
The soldier reflected. "I was there a month ago," he replied. "I observed that the flood of last
winter had lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the
bridge. It is now dry and would burn like tow."
The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremoniously,
bowed to her husband and rode away. An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the
plantation, going northward in the direction from which he had come. He was a Federal
scout.
III
As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and was
as one already dead. From this state he was awakened--ages later, it seemed to him--by the
pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant
agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of his body and limbs.
These pains appeared to flash along well-defined lines of ramification and to beat with an
inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an
intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fulness-of congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his
nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was
conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the
fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation,
like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot
upward with the noise of a loud splash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold
and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he had
fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was
already suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of
a river!--the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the darkness and saw
above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the
light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and
brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface--knew it with reluctance, for he
was now very comfortable. "To be hanged and drowned," he thought? "that is not so bad; but
I do not wish to be shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair."
He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrist apprised him that he was
trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might observe the feat
of a juggler, without interest in the outcome. What splendid effort!--what magnificent, what
superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell away; his arms
parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen on each side in the growing light. He
watched them with a new interest as first one and then the other pounced upon the noose at
his neck. They tore it away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a
water snake. "Put it back, put it back!" He thought he shouted these words to his hands, for
the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by the direst pang that he had yet experienced.
His neck ached horribly; his brain was on fire; his heart, which had been fluttering faintly,
gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. His whole body was racked and
wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his disobedient hands gave no heed to the
command. They beat the water vigorously with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to the
surface. He felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest expanded
convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a great draught of
air, which instantly he expelled in a shriek!
He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen
and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and
refined them that they made record of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon
his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank
of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf--saw the very
insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the grey spiders stretching their
webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million
blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the
beating of the dragon flies' wings, the strokes of the water-spiders' legs, like oars which had
lifted their boat--all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he
heard the rush of its body parting the water.
He had come to the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the visible world seemed to
wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers
upon the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in
silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him. The captain
had drawn his pistol, but did not fire; the others were unarmed. Their movements were
grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic.
Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly within a few
inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of
the sentinels with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle.
The man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own through the
sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a grey eye and remembered having read that grey
eyes were keenest, and that all famous marksmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had
missed.
A counter-swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was again looking into
the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous
singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a distinctness that
pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no
soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread significance of that deliberate,
drawling, aspirated chant; the lieu. tenant on shore was taking a part in the morning's work.
How coldly and pitilessly--with what an even, calm intonation, presaging, and enforcing
tranquillity in the men--with what accurately measured inter vals fell those cruel words:
"Attention, company! . . Shoulder arms! . . . Ready! . . . Aim! . . . Fire!"
Farquhar dived--dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears like the voice of
Niagara, yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley and, rising again toward the surface,
met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them
touched him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged
between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm and he snatched it out.
As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under
water; he was perceptibly farther down stream nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost
finished reloading; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn
from the barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels fired again,
independently and ineffectually.
The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming vigorously with the
current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; he thought with the rapidity of
lightning.
The officer," he reasoned, "will not make that martinet's error a second time. It is as easy to
dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will.
God help me, I cannot dodge them all!"
An appalling plash within two yards of him was followed by a loud, rushing sound,
diminuendo, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion
which stirred the very river to its deeps!
A rising sheet of water curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him!
The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of
the smitten water he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an
instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.
"They will not do that again," he thought; "the next time they will use a charge of grape. I
must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise me--the report arrives too late; it
lags behind the missile. That is a good gun."
Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round--spinning like a top. The water, the banks,
the forests, the now distant bridge, fort and men--all were commingled and blurred. Objects
were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color--that was all he saw.
He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and
gyration that made him giddy and sick. In a few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the
foot of the left bank of the stream--the southern bank--and behind a projecting point which
concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his
hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand,
threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies,
emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the
bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the
fragrance of their blooms. A strange, roseate light shone through the spaces among their
trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of Æolian harps. He had no wish to
perfect his escape--was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.
A whiz and rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his
dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed
up the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest.
All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed
interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodman's road. He had not
known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.
By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famishing. The thought of his wife and children urged
him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It
was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no
dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The
black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a
point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in
the wood, shone great garden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations.
He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance.
The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which--once, twice, and again--he
distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.
His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a
circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close
them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from
between his teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue-he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!
Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another
scene--perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own
home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have
traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he
sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from
the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of
ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs
forward with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the
back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a
cannon--then all is darkness and silence!
Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side
beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.
A Sound of Thunder
Ray Bradbury
The sign on the wall seemed to quaver under a film of sliding warm water. Eckels felt his
eyelids blink over his stare, and the sign burned in this momentary darkness:
TIME SAFARI, INC.
SAFARIS TO ANY YEAR IN THE PAST.
YOU NAME THE ANIMAL.
WE TAKE YOU THERE.
YOU SHOOT IT.
Warm phlegm gathered in Eckels' throat; he swallowed and pushed it down. The muscles
around his mouth formed a smile as he put his hand slowly out upon the air, and in that hand
waved a check for ten thousand dollars to the man behind the desk.
"Does this safari guarantee I come back alive?"
"We guarantee nothing," said the official, "except the dinosaurs." He turned. "This is Mr.
Travis, your Safari Guide in the Past. He'll tell you what and where to shoot. If he says no
shooting, no shooting. If you disobey instructions, there's a stiff penalty of another ten
thousand dollars, plus possible government action, on your return."
Eckels glanced across the vast office at a mass and tangle, a snaking and humming of wires
and steel boxes, at an aurora that flickered now orange, now silver, now blue. There was a
sound like a gigantic bonfire burning all of Time, all the years and all the parchment
calendars, all the hours piled high and set aflame.
A touch of the hand and this burning would, on the instant, beautifully reverse itself. Eckels
remembered the wording in the advertisements to the letter. Out of chars and ashes, out of
dust and coals, like golden salamanders, the old years, the green years, might leap; roses
sweeten the air, white hair turn Irish-black, wrinkles vanish; all, everything fly back to seed,
flee death, rush down to their beginnings, suns rise in western skies and set in glorious easts,
moons eat themselves opposite to the custom, all and everything cupping one in another like
Chinese boxes, rabbits into hats, all and everything returning to the fresh death, the seed
death, the green death, to the time before the beginning. A touch of a hand might do it, the
merest touch of a hand.
"Unbelievable." Eckels breathed, the light of the Machine on his thin face. "A real Time
Machine." He shook his head. "Makes you think, If the election had gone badly yesterday, I
might be here now running away from the results. Thank God Keith won. He'll make a fine
President of the United States."
"Yes," said the man behind the desk. "We're lucky. If Deutscher had gotten in, we'd have the
worst kind of dictatorship. There's an anti everything man for you, a militarist, anti-Christ,
anti-human, anti-intellectual. People called us up, you know, joking but not joking. Said if
Deutscher became President they wanted to go live in 1492. Of course it's not our business to
conduct Escapes, but to form Safaris. Anyway, Keith's President now. All you got to worry
about is-"
"Shooting my dinosaur," Eckels finished it for him.
"A Tyrannosaurus Rex. The Tyrant Lizard, the most incredible monster in history. Sign this
release. Anything happens to you, we're not responsible. Those dinosaurs are hungry."
Eckels flushed angrily. "Trying to scare me!"
"Frankly, yes. We don't want anyone going who'll panic at the first shot. Six Safari leaders
were killed last year, and a dozen hunters. We're here to give you the severest thrill a real
hunter ever asked for. Traveling you back sixty million years to bag the biggest game in all of
Time. Your personal check's still there. Tear it up."Mr. Eckels looked at the check. His
fingers twitched.
"Good luck," said the man behind the desk. "Mr. Travis, he's all yours."
They moved silently across the room, taking their guns with them, toward the Machine,
toward the silver metal and the roaring light.
First a day and then a night and then a day and then a night, then it was day-night-day-night.
A week, a month, a year, a decade! A.D. 2055. A.D. 2019. 1999! 1957! Gone! The Machine
roared.
They put on their oxygen helmets and tested the intercoms.
Eckels swayed on the padded seat, his face pale, his jaw stiff. He felt the trembling in his
arms and he looked down and found his hands tight on the new rifle. There were four other
men in the Machine. Travis, the Safari Leader, his assistant, Lesperance, and two other
hunters, Billings and Kramer. They sat looking at each other, and the years blazed around
them.
"Can these guns get a dinosaur cold?" Eckels felt his mouth saying.
"If you hit them right," said Travis on the helmet radio. "Some dinosaurs have two brains,
one in the head, another far down the spinal column. We stay away from those. That's
stretching luck. Put your first two shots into the eyes, if you can, blind them, and go back into
the brain."
The Machine howled. Time was a film run backward. Suns fled and ten million moons fled
after them. "Think," said Eckels. "Every hunter that ever lived would envy us today. This
makes Africa seem like Illinois."
The Machine slowed; its scream fell to a murmur. The Machine stopped.
The sun stopped in the sky.
The fog that had enveloped the Machine blew away and they were in an old time, a very old
time indeed, three hunters and two Safari Heads with their blue metal guns across their knees.
"Christ isn't born yet," said Travis, "Moses has not gone to the mountains to talk with God.
The Pyramids are still in the earth, waiting to be cut out and put up. Remember that.
Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler-none of them exists." The man nodded.
"That" - Mr. Travis pointed - "is the jungle of sixty million two thousand and fifty-five years
before President Keith."
He indicated a metal path that struck off into green wilderness, over streaming swamp,
among giant ferns and palms.
"And that," he said, "is the Path, laid by Time Safari for your use,
It floats six inches above the earth. Doesn't touch so much as one grass blade, flower, or tree.
It's an anti-gravity metal. Its purpose is to keep you from touching this world of the past in
any way. Stay on the Path. Don't go off it. I repeat. Don't go off. For any reason! If you fall
off, there's a penalty. And don't shoot any animal we don't okay."
"Why?" asked Eckels.
They sat in the ancient wilderness. Far birds' cries blew on a wind, and the smell of tar and an
old salt sea, moist grasses, and flowers the color of blood.
"We don't want to change the Future. We don't belong here in the Past. The government
doesn't like us here. We have to pay big graft to keep our franchise. A Time Machine is
finicky business. Not knowing it, we might kill an important animal, a small bird, a roach, a
flower even, thus destroying an important link in a growing species."
"That's not clear," said Eckels.
"All right," Travis continued, "say we accidentally kill one mouse here. That means all the
future families of this one particular mouse are destroyed, right?"
"Right"
"And all the families of the families of the families of that one mouse! With a stamp of your
foot, you annihilate first one, then a dozen, then a thousand, a million, a billion possible
mice!"
"So they're dead," said Eckels. "So what?"
"So what?" Travis snorted quietly. "Well, what about the foxes that'll need those mice to
survive? For want of ten mice, a fox dies. For want of ten foxes a lion starves. For want of a
lion, all manner of insects, vultures, infinite billions of life forms are thrown into chaos and
destruction. Eventually it all boils down to this: fifty-nine million years later, a caveman, one
of a dozen on the entire world, goes hunting wild boar or saber-toothed tiger for food. But
you, friend, have stepped on all the tigers in that region. By stepping on one single mouse. So
the caveman starves. And the caveman, please note, is not just any expendable man, no! He is
an entire future nation. From his loins would have sprung ten sons. From their loins one
hundred sons, and thus onward to a civilization. Destroy this one man, and you destroy a race,
a people, an entire history of life. It is comparable to slaying some of Adam's grandchildren.
The stomp of your foot, on one mouse, could start an earthquake, the effects of which could
shake our earth and destinies down through Time, to their very foundations. With the death of
that one caveman, a billion others yet unborn are throttled in the womb. Perhaps Rome never
rises on its seven hills. Perhaps Europe is forever a dark forest, and only Asia waxes healthy
and teeming. Step on a mouse and you crush the Pyramids. Step on a mouse and you leave
your print, like a Grand Canyon, across Eternity. Queen Elizabeth might never be born,
Washington might not cross the Delaware, there might never be a United States at all. So be
careful. Stay on the Path. Never step off!"
"I see," said Eckels. "Then it wouldn't pay for us even to touch the grass?"
"Correct. Crushing certain plants could add up infinitesimally. A little error here would
multiply in sixty million years, all out of proportion. Of course maybe our theory is wrong.
Maybe Time can't be changed by us. Or maybe it can be changed only in little subtle ways. A
dead mouse here makes an insect imbalance there, a population disproportion later, a bad
harvest further on, a depression, mass starvation, and finally, a change in social temperament
in far-flung countries. Something much more subtle, like that. Perhaps only a soft breath, a
whisper, a hair, pollen on the air, such a slight, slight change that unless you looked close you
wouldn't see it. Who knows? Who really can say he knows? We don't know. We're guessing.
But until we do know for certain whether our messing around in Time can make a big roar or
a little rustle in history, we're being careful. This Machine, this Path, your clothing and bodies,
were sterilized, as you know, before the journey. We wear these oxygen helmets so we can't
introduce our bacteria into an ancient atmosphere."
"How do we know which animals to shoot?"
"They're marked with red paint," said Travis. "Today, before our journey, we sent Lesperance
here back with the Machine. He came to this particular era and followed certain animals."
"Studying them?"
"Right," said Lesperance. "I track them through their entire existence, noting which of them
lives longest. Very few. How many times they mate. Not often. Life's short, When I find one
that's going to die when a tree falls on him, or one that drowns in a tar pit, I note the exact
hour, minute, and second. I shoot a paint bomb. It leaves a red patch on his side. We can't
miss it. Then I correlate our arrival in the Past so that we meet the Monster not more than two
minutes before he would have died anyway. This way, we kill only animals with no future,
that are never going to mate again. You see how careful we are?"
"But if you come back this morning in Time," said Eckels eagerly, you must've bumped into
us, our Safari! How did it turn out? Was it successful? Did all of us get through-alive?"
Travis and Lesperance gave each other a look.
"That'd be a paradox," said the latter. "Time doesn't permit that sort of mess-a man meeting
himself. When such occasions threaten, Time steps aside. Like an airplane hitting an air
pocket. You felt the Machine jump just before we stopped? That was us passing ourselves on
the way back to the Future. We saw nothing. There's no way of telling if this expedition was
a success, if we got our monster, or whether all of us - meaning you, Mr. Eckels - got out
alive."
Eckels smiled palely.
"Cut that," said Travis sharply. "Everyone on his feet!"
They were ready to leave the Machine.
The jungle was high and the jungle was broad and the jungle was the entire world forever and
forever. Sounds like music and sounds like flying tents filled the sky, and those were
pterodactyls soaring with cavernous gray wings, gigantic bats of delirium and night fever.
Eckels, balanced on the narrow Path, aimed his rifle playfully.
"Stop that!" said Travis. "Don't even aim for fun, blast you! If your guns should go off - - "
Eckels flushed. "Where's our Tyrannosaurus?"
Lesperance checked his wristwatch. "Up ahead, We'll bisect his trail in sixty seconds. Look
for the red paint! Don't shoot till we give the word. Stay on the Path. Stay on the Path!"
They moved forward in the wind of morning.
"Strange," murmured Eckels. "Up ahead, sixty million years, Election Day over. Keith made
President. Everyone celebrating. And here we are, a million years lost, and they don't exist.
The things we worried about for months, a lifetime, not even born or thought of yet."
"Safety catches off, everyone!" ordered Travis. "You, first shot, Eckels. Second, Billings,
Third, Kramer."
"I've hunted tiger, wild boar, buffalo, elephant, but now, this is it," said Eckels. "I'm shaking
like a kid."
"Ah," said Travis.
Everyone stopped.
Travis raised his hand. "Ahead," he whispered. "In the mist. There he is. There's His Royal
Majesty now."
The jungle was wide and full of twitterings, rustlings, murmurs, and sighs.
Suddenly it all ceased, as if someone had shut a door.
Silence.
A sound of thunder.
Out of the mist, one hundred yards away, came Tyrannosaurus Rex.
"It," whispered Eckels. "It......
"Sh!"
It came on great oiled, resilient, striding legs. It towered thirty feet above half of the trees, a
great evil god, folding its delicate watchmaker's claws close to its oily reptilian chest. Each
lower leg was a piston, a thousand pounds of white bone, sunk in thick ropes of muscle,
sheathed over in a gleam of pebbled skin like the mail of a terrible warrior. Each thigh was a
ton of meat, ivory, and steel mesh. And from the great breathing cage of the upper body those
two delicate arms dangled out front, arms with hands which might pick up and examine men
like toys, while the snake neck coiled. And the head itself, a ton of sculptured stone, lifted
easily upon the sky. Its mouth gaped, exposing a fence of teeth like daggers. Its eyes rolled,
ostrich eggs, empty of all expression save hunger. It closed its mouth in a death grin. It ran,
its pelvic bones crushing aside trees and bushes, its taloned feet clawing damp earth, leaving
prints six inches deep wherever it settled its weight.
It ran with a gliding ballet step, far too poised and balanced for its ten tons. It moved into a
sunlit area warily, its beautifully reptilian hands feeling the air.
"Why, why," Eckels twitched his mouth. "It could reach up and grab the moon."
"Sh!" Travis jerked angrily. "He hasn't seen us yet."
"It can't be killed," Eckels pronounced this verdict quietly, as if there could be no argument.
He had weighed the evidence and this was his considered opinion. The rifle in his hands
seemed a cap gun. "We were fools to come. This is impossible."
"Shut up!" hissed Travis.
"Nightmare."
"Turn around," commanded Travis. "Walk quietly to the Machine. We'll remit half your fee."
"I didn't realize it would be this big," said Eckels. "I miscalculated, that's all. And now I want
out."
"It sees us!"
"There's the red paint on its chest!"
The Tyrant Lizard raised itself. Its armored flesh glittered like a thousand green coins. The
coins, crusted with slime, steamed. In the slime, tiny insects wriggled, so that the entire body
seemed to twitch and undulate, even while the monster itself did not move. It exhaled. The
stink of raw flesh blew down the wilderness.
"Get me out of here," said Eckels. "It was never like this before. I was always sure I'd come
through alive. I had good guides, good safaris, and safety. This time, I figured wrong. I've
met my match and admit it. This is too much for me to get hold of."
"Don't run," said Lesperance. "Turn around. Hide in the Machine."
"Yes." Eckels seemed to be numb. He looked at his feet as if trying to make them move. He
gave a grunt of helplessness.
"Eckels!"
He took a few steps, blinking, shuffling.
"Not that way!"
The Monster, at the first motion, lunged forward with a terrible scream. It covered one
hundred yards in six seconds. The rifles jerked up and blazed fire. A windstorm from the
beast's mouth engulfed them in the stench of slime and old blood. The Monster roared, teeth
glittering with sun.
The rifles cracked again, Their sound was lost in shriek and lizard thunder. The great level of
the reptile's tail swung up, lashed sideways. Trees exploded in clouds of leaf and branch. The
Monster twitched its jeweler's hands down to fondle at the men, to twist them in half, to crush
them like berries, to cram them into its teeth and its screaming throat. Its boulderstone eyes
leveled with the men. They saw themselves mirrored. They fired at the metallic eyelids and
the blazing black iris,
Like a stone idol, like a mountain avalanche, Tyrannosaurus fell.
Thundering, it clutched trees, pulled them with it. It wrenched and tore the metal Path. The
men flung themselves back and away. The body hit, ten tons of cold flesh and stone. The
guns fired. The Monster lashed its armored tail, twitched its snake jaws, and lay still. A fount
of blood spurted from its throat. Somewhere inside, a sac of fluids burst. Sickening gushes
drenched the hunters. They stood, red and glistening.
The thunder faded.
The jungle was silent. After the avalanche, a green peace. After the nightmare, morning.
Billings and Kramer sat on the pathway and threw up. Travis and Lesperance stood with
smoking rifles, cursing steadily. In the Time Machine, on his face, Eckels lay shivering. He
had found his way back to the Path, climbed into the Machine.
Travis came walking, glanced at Eckels, took cotton gauze from a metal box, and returned to
the others, who were sitting on the Path.
"Clean up."
They wiped the blood from their helmets. They began to curse too. The Monster lay, a hill of
solid flesh. Within, you could hear the sighs and murmurs as the furthest chambers of it died,
the organs malfunctioning, liquids running a final instant from pocket to sac to spleen,
everything shutting off, closing up forever. It was like standing by a wrecked locomotive or a
steam shovel at quitting time, all valves being released or levered tight. Bones cracked; the
tonnage of its own flesh, off balance, dead weight, snapped the delicate forearms, caught
underneath. The meat settled, quivering.
Another cracking sound. Overhead, a gigantic tree branch broke from its heavy mooring, fell.
It crashed upon the dead beast with finality.
"There." Lesperance checked his watch. "Right on time. That's the giant tree that was
scheduled to fall and kill this animal originally." He glanced at the two hunters. "You want
the trophy picture?"
"What?"
"We can't take a trophy back to the Future. The body has to stay right here where it would
have died originally, so the insects, birds, and bacteria can get at it, as they were intended to.
Everything in balance. The body stays. But we can take a picture of you standing near it."
The two men tried to think, but gave up, shaking their heads.
They let themselves be led along the metal Path. They sank wearily into the Machine
cushions. They gazed back at the ruined Monster, the stagnating mound, where already
strange reptilian birds and golden insects were busy at the steaming armor. A sound on the
floor of the Time Machine stiffened them. Eckels sat there, shivering.
"I'm sorry," he said at last.
"Get up!" cried Travis.
Eckels got up.
"Go out on that Path alone," said Travis. He had his rifle pointed, "You're not coming back in
the Machine. We're leaving you here!"
Lesperance seized Travis's arm. "Wait-"
"Stay out of this!" Travis shook his hand away. "This fool nearly killed us. But it isn't that so
much, no. It's his shoes! Look at them! He ran off the Path. That ruins us! We'll forfeit!
Thousands of dollars of insurance! We guarantee no one leaves the Path. He left it. Oh, the
fool! I'll have to report to the government. They might revoke our license to travel. Who
knows what he's done to Time, to History!"
"Take it easy, all he did was kick up some dirt."
"How do we know?" cried Travis. "We don't know anything! It's all a mystery! Get out of
here, Eckels!"
Eckels fumbled his shirt. "I'll pay anything. A hundred thousand dollars!"
Travis glared at Eckels' checkbook and spat. "Go out there. The Monster's next to the Path.
Stick your arms up to your elbows in his mouth. Then you can come back with us."
"That's unreasonable!"
"The Monster's dead, you idiot. The bullets! The bullets can't be left behind. They don't
belong in the Past; they might change anything. Here's my knife. Dig them out!"
The jungle was alive again, full of the old tremorings and bird cries. Eckels turned slowly to
regard the primeval garbage dump, that hill of nightmares and terror. After a long time, like a
sleepwalker he shuffled out along the Path.
He returned, shuddering, five minutes later, his arms soaked and red to the elbows. He held
out his hands. Each held a number of steel bullets. Then he fell. He lay where he fell, not
moving.
"You didn't have to make him do that," said Lesperance.
"Didn't I? It's too early to tell." Travis nudged the still body. "He'll live. Next time he won't
go hunting game like this. Okay." He jerked his thumb wearily at Lesperance. "Switch on.
Let's go home."
1492. 1776. 1812.
They cleaned their hands and faces. They changed their caking shirts and pants. Eckels was
up and around again, not speaking. Travis glared at him for a full ten minutes.
"Don't look at me," cried Eckels. "I haven't done anything."
"Who can tell?"
"Just ran off the Path, that's all, a little mud on my shoes-what do you want me to do-get
down and pray?"
"We might need it. I'm warning you, Eckels, I might kill you yet. I've got my gun ready."
"I'm innocent. I've done nothing!"
1999.2000.2055.
The Machine stopped.
"Get out," said Travis.
The room was there as they had left it. But not the same as they had left it. The same man sat
behind the same desk. But the same man did not quite sit behind the same desk. Travis
looked around swiftly. "Everything okay here?" he snapped.
"Fine. Welcome home!"
Travis did not relax. He seemed to be looking through the one high window.
"Okay, Eckels, get out. Don't ever come back." Eckels could not move.
"You heard me," said Travis. "What're you staring at?"
Eckels stood smelling of the air, and there was a thing to the air, a chemical taint so subtle, so
slight, that only a faint cry of his subliminal senses warned him it was there. The colors,
white, gray, blue, orange, in the wall, in the furniture, in the sky beyond the window, were . . .
were . . . . And there was a feel. His flesh twitched. His hands twitched. He stood drinking the
oddness with the pores of his body. Somewhere, someone must have been screaming one of
those whistles that only a dog can hear. His body screamed silence in return. Beyond this
room, beyond this wall, beyond this man who was not quite the same man seated at this desk
that was not quite the same desk . . . lay an entire world of streets and people. What sort of
world it was now, there was no telling. He could feel them moving there, beyond the walls,
almost, like so many chess pieces blown in a dry wind ....
But the immediate thing was the sign painted on the office wall, the same sign he had read
earlier today on first entering. Somehow, the sign had changed:
TYME SEFARI INC.
SEFARIS TU ANY YEER EN THE PAST.
YU NAIM THE ANIMALL.
WEE TAEK YU THAIR.
YU SHOOT ITT.
Eckels felt himself fall into a chair. He fumbled crazily at the thick slime on his boots. He
held up a clod of dirt, trembling, "No, it can't be. Not a little thing like that. No!"
Embedded in the mud, glistening green and gold and black, was a butterfly, very beautiful
and very dead.
"Not a little thing like that! Not a butterfly!" cried Eckels.
It fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a small thing that could upset balances and knock down
a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the
years across Time. Eckels' mind whirled. It couldn't change things. Killing one butterfly
couldn't be that important! Could it?
His face was cold. His mouth trembled, asking: "Who - who won the presidential election
yesterday?"
The man behind the desk laughed. "You joking? You know very well. Deutscher, of course!
Who else? Not that fool weakling Keith. We got an iron man now, a man with guts!" The
official stopped. "What's wrong?"
Eckels moaned. He dropped to his knees. He scrabbled at the golden butterfly with shaking
fingers. "Can't we," he pleaded to the world, to himself, to the officials, to the Machine, "can't
we take it back, can't we make it alive again? Can't we start over? Can't we-"
He did not move. Eyes shut, he waited, shivering. He heard Travis breathe loud in the room;
he heard Travis shift his rifle, click the safety catch, and raise the weapon.
There was a sound of thunder.
Ray Bradbury, "A Sound of Thunder," in R is for Rocket, (New York: Doubleday, 1952)
The Looking-glass
By Anton Chekhov
NEW YEAR'S EVE. Nellie, the daughter of a landowner and general, a young and pretty girl,
dreaming day and night of being married, was sitting in her room, gazing with exhausted, halfclosed eyes into the looking-glass. She was pale, tense, and as motionless as the looking-glass.
The non-existent but apparent vista of a long, narrow corridor with endless rows of candles, the
reflection of her face, her hands, of the frame -- all this was already clouded in mist and merged
into a boundless grey sea. The sea was undulating, gleaming and now and then flaring
crimson. . . .
Looking at Nellie's motionless eyes and parted lips, one could hardly say whether she was asleep
or awake, but nevertheless she was seeing. At first she saw only the smile and soft, charming
expression of someone's eyes, then against the shifting grey background there gradually appeared
the outlines of a head, a face, eyebrows, beard. It was he, the destined one, the object of long
dreams and hopes. The destined one was for Nellie everything, the significance of life, personal
happiness, career, fate. Outside him, as on the grey background of the looking-glass, all was dark,
empty, meaningless. And so it was not strange that, seeing before her a handsome, gently smiling
face, she was conscious of bliss, of an unutterably sweet dream that could not be expressed in
speech or on paper. Then she heard his voice, saw herself living under the same roof with him, her
life merged into his. Months and years flew by against the grey background. And Nellie saw her
future distinctly in all its details.
Picture followed picture against the grey background. Now Nellie saw herself one winter night
knocking at the door of Stepan Lukitch, the district doctor. The old dog hoarsely and lazily barked
behind the gate. The doctor's windows were in darkness. All was silence.
"For God's sake, for God's sake!" whispered Nellie.
But at last the garden gate creaked and Nellie saw the doctor's cook.
"Is the doctor at home?"
"His honour's asleep," whispered the cook into her sleeve, as though afraid of waking her master.
"He's only just got home from his fever patients, and gave orders he was not to be waked."
But Nellie scarcely heard the cook. Thrusting her aside, she rushed headlong into the doctor's
house. Running through some dark and stuffy rooms, upsetting two or three chairs, she at last
reached the doctor's bedroom. Stepan Lukitch was lying on his bed, dressed, but without his coat,
and with pouting lips was breathing into his open hand. A little night-light glimmered faintly beside
him. Without uttering a word Nellie sat down and began to cry. She wept bitterly, shaking all over.
"My husband is ill!" she sobbed out. Stepan Lukitch was silent. He slowly sat up, propped his head
on his hand, and looked at his visitor with fixed, sleepy eyes. "My husband is ill!" Nellie continued,
restraining her sobs. "For mercy's sake come quickly. Make haste. . . . Make haste!"
"Eh?" growled the doctor, blowing into his hand.
"Come! Come this very minute! Or . . . it's terrible to think! For mercy's sake!"
And pale, exhausted Nellie, gasping and swallowing her tears, began describing to the doctor her
husband's illness, her unutterable terror. Her sufferings would have touched the heart of a stone,
but the doctor looked at her, blew into his open hand, and -- not a movement.
"I'll come to-morrow!" he muttered.
"That's impossible!" cried Nellie. "I know my husband has typhus! At once . . . this very minute
you are needed!"
"I . . . er . . . have only just come in," muttered the doctor. "For the last three days I've been
away, seeing typhus patients, and I'm exhausted and ill myself. . . . I simply can't! Absolutely! I've
caught it myself! There!"
And the doctor thrust before her eyes a clinical thermometer.
"My temperature is nearly forty. . . . I absolutely can't. I can scarcely sit up. Excuse me. I'll lie
down. . . ."
The doctor lay down.
"But I implore you, doctor," Nellie moaned in despair. "I beseech you! Help me, for mercy's sake!
Make a great effort and come! I will repay you, doctor!"
"Oh, dear! . . . Why, I have told you already. Ah!"
Nellie leapt up and walked nervously up and down the bedroom. She longed to explain to the
doctor, to bring him to reason. . . . She thought if only he knew how dear her husband was to her
and how unhappy she was, he would forget his exhaustion and his illness. But how could she be
eloquent enough?
"Go to the Zemstvo doctor," she heard Stepan Lukitch's voice.
"That's impossible! He lives more than twenty miles from here, and time is precious. And the
horses can't stand it. It is thirty miles from us to you, and as much from here to the Zemstvo
doctor. No, it's impossible! Come along, Stepan Lukitch. I ask of you an heroic deed. Come,
perform that heroic deed! Have pity on us!"
"It's beyond everything. . . . I'm in a fever. . . my head's in a whirl . . . and she won't understand!
Leave me alone!"
"But you are in duty bound to come! You cannot refuse to come! It's egoism! A man is bound to
sacrifice his life for his neighbour, and you. . . you refuse to come! I will summon you before the
Court."
Nellie felt that she was uttering a false and undeserved insult, but for her husband's sake she was
capable of forgetting logic, tact, sympathy for others. . . . In reply to her threats, the doctor
greedily gulped a glass of cold water. Nellie fell to entreating and imploring like the very lowest
beggar. . . . At last the doctor gave way. He slowly got up, puffing and panting, looking for his
coat.
"Here it is!" cried Nellie, helping him. "Let me put it on to you. Come along! I will repay you. . . .
All my life I shall be grateful to you. . . ."
But what agony! After putting on his coat the doctor lay down again. Nellie got him up and
dragged him to the hall. Then there was an agonizing to-do over his goloshes, his overcoat. . . .
His cap was lost. . . . But at last Nellie was in the carriage with the doctor. Now they had only to
drive thirty miles and her husband would have a doctor's help. The earth was wrapped in darkness.
One could not see one's hand before one's face. . . . A cold winter wind was blowing. There were
frozen lumps under their wheels. The coachman was continually stopping and wondering which
road to take.
Nellie and the doctor sat silent all the way. It was fearfully jolting, but they felt neither the cold
nor the jolts.
"Get on, get on!" Nellie implored the driver.
At five in the morning the exhausted horses drove into the yard. Nellie saw the familiar gates, the
well with the crane, the long row of stables and barns. At last she was at home.
"Wait a moment, I will be back directly," she said to Stepan Lukitch, making him sit down on the
sofa in the dining-room. "Sit still and wait a little, and I'll see how he is going on."
On her return from her husband, Nellie found the doctor lying down. He was lying on the sofa and
muttering.
"Doctor, please! . . . doctor!"
"Eh? Ask Domna!" muttered Stepan Lukitch.
"What?"
"They said at the meeting . . . Vlassov said . . . Who? . . . what?"
And to her horror Nellie saw that the doctor was as delirious as her husband. What was to be done?
"I must go for the Zemstvo doctor," she decided.
Then again there followed darkness, a cutting cold wind, lumps of frozen earth. She was suffering
in body and in soul, and delusive nature has no arts, no deceptions to compensate these
sufferings. . . .
Then she saw against the grey background how her husband every spring was in straits for money
to pay the interest for the mortgage to the bank. He could not sleep, she could not sleep, and both
racked their brains till their heads ached, thinking how to avoid being visited by the clerk of the
Court.
She saw her children: the everlasting apprehension of colds, scarlet fever, diphtheria, bad marks
at school, separation. Out of a brood of five or six one was sure to die.
The grey background was not untouched by death. That might well be. A husband and wife cannot
die simultaneously. Whatever happened one must bury the other. And Nellie saw her husband
dying. This terrible event presented itself to her in every detail. She saw the coffin, the candles,
the deacon, and even the footmarks in the hall made by the undertaker.
"Why is it, what is it for?" she asked, looking blankly at her husband's face.
And all the previous life with her husband seemed to her a stupid prelude to this.
Something fell from Nellie's hand and knocked on the floor. She started, jumped up, and opened
her eyes wide. One looking-glass she saw lying at her feet. The other was standing as before on
the table.
She looked into the looking-glass and saw a pale, tear-stained face. There was no grey
background now.
"I must have fallen asleep," she thought with a sigh of relief.